


Test Woes

by Kiiratam



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Fluff, Ruby nerds out over weapons, Team RWBY gets ice cream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-11 20:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20159512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: Team RWBY has survived their first written test. Even if they don't feel like it.Takes place in Volume 1, around Episode 14. (My BMBLB fic index)





	Test Woes

Ruby collapsed face first into the grass, groaning.

  
"It wasn't that bad, Ruby." Yang crouched next to her.

  
"It kind of was." Blake sat down on Ruby's other side, and stretched herself out in the grass.

  
Weiss sighed. "That test was... not quite what I was expecting."

  
Raising her head, Ruby said, "That test kicked my butt."

  
"You are not alone in that. I thought I had a good grasp on the Faunus Rights Revolution." Blake reached out and patted Ruby's shoulder.

  
"And that was only the first test. What is Oobleck going to put on the next one?" Weiss delicately lowered herself to the grass.

  
"Ugggh, just let me suffer for today. I only have so much suffering to give." Ruby dropped her head back into the grass. "And I am using all of it right now."

  
Yang looked down at the wreckage of team RWBY, thinking. "Okay, guys. We should go do something. No point sitting around moping."

  
Ruby started groaning again. "Just leave me to die."

  
"I mean, if you don't want to get ice cream-"

  
In a blaze of rose petals, Ruby was on her feet. "Come on, Blake, Weiss! We've got places to be!"

  
Blake sat back up. "Maybe it'll help." Yang reached out and offered a hand, pulling her to her feet.

  
"I don't know. I should go reread my notes, and review the textbook, and-"

  
Grinning, Yang asked, "What, you don't like Weiss Cream? There's snow changing your test grade now. And I didn't think you were sort to melt under pressure." She offered Weiss her hand.

  
Weiss glared up at Yang. "Are the puns supposed to help?"

  
"Nah, just to get you steamed up. I hate seeing my friends cry their ice out."

  
Rolling her eyes, Weiss took Yang's hand.

  
Yang pulled her up. "There you go! Fortune favors the cold. If we hurry, we can catch the first shuttle to Vale."

* * *

Yang looked over at Weiss' dish. "What, do you not actually like Weiss cream?"

  
Taking a small spoonful of her sorbet, Weiss shook her head. "It's just not the same. My butler made the best ice cream, and nothing I've tried has been anywhere as good."

  
Ruby looked up from her banana split. "Waaaaait, did you have a cake butler and an ice cream butler?"

  
"No, my butler was just very talented."

  
Nibbling at the edges of her ice cream cone, Blake said. "I had handmade ice cream once. It was a lot of work. But very good."

  
"You could have gotten more than one scoop, Blake." Yang looked up from her own sundae. "And something other than just vanilla."

  
"Yeah, if you'd gotten it in a dish, you could put sprinkles and chocolate sauce and caramel and nuts and everything on it!" Ruby indicated her own, which only had visible ice cream where she'd taken spoonfuls out.

  
"I like vanilla."

  
Ruby and Yang shrugged at each other, turned back to their dishes.

  
Weiss spoke up, after taking another bite. "Do you really think this sets the best precedent? Getting ice cream after we all did poorly on a test?"

  
Ruby said, spoon halfway to her mouth. "I mean, we don't actually know how we did yet."

  
Yang nodded. "Maybe Oobleck grades on a curve."

  
"Or maybe he just makes the first test extra hard, to get everyone to pay attention." Blake added.

  
"Besides," Yang indicated the rest of the ice cream shoppe, packed with students in Beacon and Signal uniforms, "It's a Friday. It doesn't have to be a reward for the test. It can just be a weekend thing."

  
Weiss looked down. "I suppose."

  
"The teachers aren't going to go easy on us." Yang said. "So we have to be nice to ourselves. If that means going out to ice cream, I'm ready to make that sacrifice." She looked over at Ruby's dish. "Sis, how are you done already?"

  
Ruby put her spoon down, burped. "It's ice cream, Yang. It's delicious."

  
"How you don't get brainfreezes, I don't know."

  
Blake licked a drip off the side of her cone. "It's probably all the toppings."

  
Looking around the table, Weiss asked. "What did we want to do after this? We do have a test in Port's class on Tuesday. And that field trip for Peach on Monday."

  
"Weiss, we don't need to study for a field trip." Ruby had picked up her spoon, and was eyeing Yang's sundae.

  
"Besides, it's Port." Yang waved her hand. "There's going to be a practical part. Hard to study for those." She whacked Ruby's hand as she tried to sneak a spoonful. "Mine."

  
Shaking her hand, Ruby said, "There's a special exhibit on historical weapons at the Vale History Museum. I asked Jaune if he wanted to go, but he said he was busy."

  
Weiss sniffed. "Trying to make him feel better about that antique he carries around? Ruby, it's not even a gun."

  
"Well, no, but it could be. I was going to go look for ideas that were dead-end at the time." Ruby got that excited gleam in her eye. "Like shields. Huntresses and Huntsmen don't really use them anymore. Jaune and Pyrrha are old-fashioned that way. But we have the tech that we could do a lot more with them now. But we don't, because practically no one uses them. But look how much use Pyrrha gets out of hers!"

  
Yang asked, "Was this something Mulbery put you up to?"

  
"I mean, one of our long-term projects for Weapons Lab is to make an alternate version of our weapon. I didn't want to just make 'Crescent Rose as a shotgun,' she deserves better than that."

  
"Plus, that's already uncle Qrow's weapon."

  
"Welllllll, he's got the sword mode too, but yeah." Ruby continued. "So I thought I'd get a whole bunch of 'dead-end' ideas, and try to modernize them."

  
Yang shrugged. "Sounds interesting to me. What does everyone else think?"

  
Blake flashed a thumbs up as she started eating her cone.

  
"I don't know, Ruby. I'm fine with Myrtenaster as she is." Weiss set her spoon down in her dish.

  
"Weiss, it's not like you walk into the exhibit and your weapon turns into an antique. Besides, some of those old weapons had a lot of artistry put into them. They didn't have rocket lockers like we do, so their weapons had to be suitable for all social occasions. I heard they had some of the old royal weapons, and those must amazing."

  
"I suppose its more useful than going to the movies."

* * *

"Weiss, Weiss, look at this!" Ruby grabbed her by the arm and dragged her over to a display. "It looks like Myrtenaster's great-uncle!" She pointed at the broadsword in the display. There was a chamber enclosing the ricasso, and red Dust shone within. "It looks like it works on the same ideas, but the gun tech wasn't as advanced. So they only had the one use of Dust."

  
Reading off the display sign, Weiss said, "'The weapon of Eisen Eis, Huntsman and soldier-of-fortune. Weapon name unknown. Recovered from the abandoned lair of an unknown Grimm.' I've never heard of him."

  
"Well, someone clearly had. Look at those designs on the blade."

  
Weiss peered closer. "They do look very similar to Myrtenaster's. I wonder if the Schnee family smith had access to the plans for this weapon. Or the weapon itself."

  
"Wait." Ruby turned to look at her friend. "Do you mean that you didn't build Myrtenaster?"

  
Weiss looked back at Ruby. "Of course not. I told the smith my requirements, they took their measurements, and I was presented with my weapon. Who would let a child make their own weapon?"

  
"Signal Academy? We all make our own?" Ruby jerked her thumb at Yang and Blake, on the far side of the room. "Yang made Ember Celica, I made Crescent Rose. Uncle Qrow has had a few different Harbingers. I mean, Dad didn't make his own, but he doesn't use one anyway, soooo..."

  
"That's ridiculous. We're training to be Huntresses, not weaponsmiths."

  
"But what happens if Myrtenaster breaks when you're in the field?"

  
"Ruby, I know how to perform maintenance on my weapon. She's not going to fall apart spontaneously. Could you rebuild a broken Crescent Rose in a cave?" Weiss paused half a second for a response, then ploughed on. "Of course not. You need a work bench, tools, parts. All things that you can't get in the field. If Crescent Rose broke in the field, you'd be in as much trouble as I would be if Myrtenaster broke."

  
"But what about-"

* * *

"They're arguing again, aren't they?" Yang focused on the display in front of her, with seventeen different kinds of polearms.

  
Blake nodded.

  
"They'll run out of things to argue about eventually, right? I mean, it's been over three weeks. And they haven't repeated themselves."

  
"That's your plan? Wait for them to exhaust all unique arguments?" Blake looked at Yang skeptically. "Why do you think they won't refight old battles?"

  
Yang shrugged. "They love novelty?" She sighed, shook her head. "Okay, it is a pretty bad plan. But they're not fighting, really. Just discussing."

  
"Loudly." Blake watched a docent come over to shush them.

  
"It's better than they did the first week. I thought I was going to have to get a spray bottle or something. But they worked through that."

  
"Eventually."

  
Turning to face her team-mate, Yang ask, "Are you okay, Blake? You seem quieter than normal."

  
"It's just the test. I don't want to agree with Weiss, but she was right. The questions were odd."

  
"How so? They seemed like the kind of questions Oobleck would ask."

  
Blake groped around for an answer. She looked at the display, and started talking. "Imagine all your life, you've been told that's a glaive." She pointed at one polearm, with a broad knife-like head. Even under the museum lights, the edge and point glimmered with menace. "And then you come to Beacon, and they tell you, 'No, that's a glaive.'" Blake swung her arm around to point at a different display, with a two-handed sword within. "That's what the test was like."

  
Yang looked back and forth between the two weapons. "Yeah, that would be pretty bad."

  
"Plus, I thought I knew it. It's... frustrating."

  
"What, did you do a project on the Faunus Rights Revolution at your last school?"

  
Blake thought for a moment, nodded. "Basically."

  
"It's all just- sad. The Faunus just want to be treated as equals, and we just say no and try to kick them more? What is wrong with people? No wonder the Faunus got fed up. I'd be angry too." Yang clenched a fist.

  
"Yeah. So would I."

  
Blowing out a breath, Yang turned to Blake. "Want to go look at the katanas? I bet there are some really pretty ones."

  
She nodded.

  
"I've always liked them. But my dad taught me to fight unarmed, so that's what I went with." Yang laughed, "I did think about putting a retractable katana blade in Ember Celica, but I couldn't figure how to make it work. From a 'how would I swing it?' point of view."

  
"Yeah, that would be a problem." Nodding, Blake continued, "You'd be swinging from the shoulder, which has power-"

  
"-but no finesse. And you can stab with them-"

  
"But there are better weapons for that. And if you can't slice, why have a katana?"

  
"Exactly. I mean, there's a lot of aesthetic appreciation there, which I would have lost too. Since switchblade katana." Yang paused, then added. "But I really do like how Gambol Shroud looks. She may not be a classic katana, but she's a lot more versatile. I mean, there are how many modes? And you use all of them? I mean, I just punch."

  
Smiling, Blake said. "And shotgun. Don't sell yourself short, Yang. You're a specialist. I dabble."

  
"You're just the girl with a style for every day of the week. I mean, what can't you do?"

  
"Long range fire?"

  
Yang thought for a minute. "Yeah, but Ruby's really weird that she can do that. I think Pyrrha's the only other one in our class who can also do long range. And it's Pyrrha. I'm pretty sure she could fly if she wanted to."

* * *

Oobleck stood up in front of the class, vibrating as usual. "Now, now, this was the first test, so I understand some of the more hesitant answers I received. I have given everyone extensive notes, and I hope you can use those notes to improve all your future tests in this class! Now then," He blurred, passing out the tests. "Look them over, and come ask me any questions after class! So, in the aftermath of the Faunus Rights Revolution-"

  
Ruby looked at her test. A C+ was written in the top right corner. 'Excellent work, Miss Rose! You're missing some of the context behind why the war occurred, but that can be readily explained by your skipped years. I've listed some books on the final page that you may wish to examine in order to patch that hole in your history education. They will, of course, be less relevant now that the primary context is the FRR, but they will still be applicable, and, I hope, interesting.' She flipped to the last page, and tried not to groan at how many books were listed.

  
Weiss had already started taking notes on Oobleck's current lecture, but spared a glance at her test. B. 'On many points, Miss Schnee, you were technically correct, but seem to have misinterpreted the motives of the involved parties. Naturally, some motives are up for debate, given our sources. But you seem determined to ascribe the worst possible motives to the Faunus Revolutionary Council, contrary to-' She gave up on her test annotations, and concentrated on her current extravagant set of notes.

  
Blake tried to ignore her test, opening her notebook and starting to fill the latest page with a mix of notes, doodles, and scraps of poetry. Eventually, though, her curiosity got the better of her, and she slid the top edge out. B+. 'A very interesting read, Miss Belladonna! You had some very novel perspectives that I greatly enjoyed reading! I even had to head to the library myself, to look up some of your more esoteric examples. What a joy! I ought to find your last history teacher and shake their hand. And borrow their sources!' She winced. Looked over and saw that she had started doodling a wolfshead. Hurried scratched it out.

  
Yang checked her test. A-. 'Brilliant, Miss Xiao Long! You appear to have an excellent grasp of the parties involved, and their grievances. A little uncertainty on the tactics and overall strategy, but then, the same could be said of the various generals, ha! I will, of course, expect you to only improve yourself in the course of this class.' She stuffed the test in her bag, pulled out her notebook, and started taking notes.


End file.
